Topic Tuesday #3: How My Story Originated.

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Ari Meermans

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During the Why This Story? discussion, we (happily) touched on ideas and events that can inspire a story. In How My Story Originated, we move closer in to talk about how that kernel of inspiration is developed into story.

Do you start with the character, the premise, the plot, or build outward from a scene? Tell us about your process.

Each story is different and these approaches can often be story-dependent. If you do employ all these developmental methods, pick your favorite or the one that worked best for you and tell us why.

Go.





Heh. I didn’t promise you easy topics, guys.



Topic Tuesday #4 will be on Tuesday, November 29th. Our topic will be How I Keep My Story from Fizzling at the End.
 
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leifwright

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During the Why This Story? discussion, we (happily) touched on ideas and events that can inspire a story. In How My Story Originated, we move closer in to talk about how that kernel of inspiration is developed into story.

Do you start with the character, the premise, the plot, or build outward from a scene? Tell us about your process.

Each story is different and these approaches can often be story-dependent. If you do employ all these developmental methods, pick your favorite or the one that worked best for you and tell us why.

Go.

This will sound all millennial and foo foo, but the truth is, the story has to be something organic in your brain; something that wants to be told. For my first novel (now thankfully unpublished after a LOT of begging on my part), the story was born of a trick I used to do to put myself to sleep at night: think of the most ridiculous thing you can and then concentrate on working out the details of how that thing could actually happen. In my case, it was time travel and the scientifically based ability to control matter at the subatomic level, which would make someone essentially godlike. Add that to the idea that "magic" is just science we don't understand, and I got the idea that "wizards" in the medieval ages were really just time travelers trying to muck with the timeline. The process I used to write that book was very hackneyed and unsophisticated. I decided on a page count and then started writing until I hit it. The story suffered for it, and ultimately, it was about 80,000 words too long.

My second novel (again, thankfully non-published) was based on the simple idea of What if God was really the bad guy, but as the winner, he got to write the history? What if Satan was really the hero, fighting against the tyranny of God? That book actually got as far as Joe Hill's agent, who loved it until the ending, and then died before I could send him the revised copy. In hindsight, I'm glad it didn't go through, because I've since cannibalized parts of the story for other stories. For that book, I started with the basic idea and then split it into requisite pieces. How would I make the story relevant to modern readers? For that, I came up with two basic plots: one, the "antichrist" had to be a modern guy named Joshua, because "Jesus" is really just a latinized version of the Hebrew Joshua, and since the antichrist is supposed to be a fake Jesus, he should have the right name. I turned him into an archaeologist who discovers an ancient spaceship that turned out to be the vessel through which "God" and the "angels" came to earth. The second plot thread was a modern computer guy who was thrust into the middle of the mystery by having his image turn up in a comic book written 20 years before he was born. And then I aimed the two plot lines on a collision course by interjecting "Satan," who was really just trying to get the truth out there before armageddon.

My first published book (in my name, at least) was a true crime book about my best friend, who was a fundamentalist preacher and later decided to take on multiple wives. But when one of those wives started to get lippy, he murdered her, cut her body into pieces, bashed her face in with a sledgehammer, sawed her teeth out and cut her fingertips off, then buried her in the Arizona desert. My approach to that book was also very rudimentary: I started at the beginning, when my friend was in high school, and followed the story through to the trial and conviction. In hindsight, I think it could have been written much better, with much better storytelling, even though it was a true story.

My first published novel (Minister of Justice) was really conceived when the title came to me in the shower. I looked it up, and there were no other books with the title, so I started rolling it around in my head for a few days, trying to decide what kind of story it would be. I ended up with a murder mystery. I started at the discovery of the body and then used the main character's perspective to let the story blossom. I did not decide until the last few pages who I wanted the killer to be, which kept the book fun to write (and I hope, to read). That uncertainty forced me to plant seeds for each of the characters to potentially be the killer, and though I didn't tease the reader with that possibility, if I had decided to make it someone other than who it turned up being, it would have made complete sense.

My second novel (Robby the R-Word), which comes out in the spring, came from a guy I knew when I was in junior high school. He was profoundly handicapped, but everyone insisted "he's in there; he understands everything, he just can't communicate." From that foundation, I thought, "wouldn't that be horrible?" So I decided to have a character who had faced such situations, and bring him to the point where he could communicate, and what kinds of things would he say? What would he do? But that idea soon paled as the true main character revealed herself: Bain, the detective who has a chip on her shoulder about being a pretty, petite woman in the man's world of the police precinct and having to prove to herself and the other officers that she's worthy of being where she is. Through the writing, her best friend and former partner popped up, and it turned out their relationship ended up being a main focus of the book. And, of course, a serial killer who killed lot lizards along the interstates. The point is, the book ended up growing organically from the initial idea.

I can't plot out a book in advance, and I certainly can't do an outline and then write to it. I like the chaos of letting the story unravel itself.


Topic Tuesday #4 will be on Tuesday, November 28th. Our topic will be How I Keep My Story from Fizzling at the End.

This is a great topic. I can't wait, because that's the main thing I fret over from the minute I write "Chapter 1".
 

ishtar'sgate

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Short stories usually originate from news reports or something I've read in the paper, something that touches a nerve. I've only written two novels. One is published and the other is still in the works. Both are historical and both came about because of interest in a particular time period that got me thinking about the kind of people that would have lived then and what they would have gone through to survive.
 

leifwright

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Short stories usually originate from news reports or something I've read in the paper, something that touches a nerve. I've only written two novels. One is published and the other is still in the works. Both are historical and both came about because of interest in a particular time period that got me thinking about the kind of people that would have lived then and what they would have gone through to survive.

With Babylonian art as your avatar, I'm guessing your time period is during the empire of Babylon.

If so, YES!
 

Helix

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Quick answer:

They usually start with settings -- a mangrove swamp in Far North Queensland, a salt lake in western Victoria, an isolated beach in Tasmania -- and I think what could happen here? Then why? And then I construct characters to suit the what? and the why? Often the natural history and ecology of the area influences the story structure.

Sometimes they start with working titles.
 

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I don't have a process, and every story I've written, long or short, has differed in its origin. I wrote one short story that I consider among my best, based simply on an idea for a title that came out of nowhere. Another short I feel good about originated from a kind of personally generated challenge to play a bit with point-of-view. My best unpublishable novel originated from personal experience, but only in basis, and is not autobiographical. My second best unpublishable novel originated from a fascination with a couple of secondary characters in a famous American novel. A few others have been generated by inspiration from other writers.

Every time I've tried to write something to fit a "genre", it has been an unmitigated horror.

caw
 

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A line or dialogue pops into my head and I build a story around it. I write out of order and pants the thing, but if I really had to, I could outline it. It's just not as fun and would slow things down.
 

ElaineA

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My stories almost always arise from a premise. (It's that evul Writing degree, too many years of "Write a story about...") My now-trunked-but-still-favorite-novel arose when I stood in the forum at Pompeii, turned around, saw how close Vesuvius really was, and thought, "What did the citizens think when that mountain started smoking? If I were standing right here during the eruption, what would it have looked/sounded/felt like."

But this novel I'm NaNo-ing now arose from characters, and it's been very difficult for me to come at it from that angle. I really love these characters who materialized in my head as images, but they had no obvious story, either individually or together. I had to "what if" the hell out of them to figure out their backstories, their intersection, and what they could/should do on the page that would end up worth reading about. I still really like them, and now they have a story, but in the back of my mind it still feels a bit like I'm shoving a square peg in a round hole. (Or I'm just too set in my ways to feel comfortable with change. :D)

So I'm really curious, if anyone would like to expand on their experiences, What do you do when a story comes at you (or originates) in a totally unexpected or unfamiliar way? Dismiss it out of hand? Plot until it either becomes something or doesn't? Start to write it and see where it goes? Shove it into the back of the brain-closet for more aging? I assume most of us have had more story ideas than written works. I can't help wondering if trying to write from an unfamiliar starting point is counterproductive. Should we "stick with what's been working?"
 

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I think we have to get out of the way of the story. I think the best stuff comes from our subconscious, and if I were you, I'd look at it as a gift and just go with it. I've had the thought that much of art is "truly" experienced in the subconscious, by the reader, the listener, whatever; so when I've found myself creating from the subconscious I've always felt like I'd been set free, like I finally had gotten to the fertile place. I'd gotten a free ride and would follow it wherever it led. I was certain that where it would take me would be a more interesting place than I could have found on my own. Your first thought after an experience like that is, 'wait, now how do I get back to where I was? How do I fit this in with what I was doing?' My advice would be to consider the possibility that that was where you were going all along; and you just didn't know it.

Then again, this is all very tenuous, elusive stuff, so it's quite possible that I am thoroughly full of shit. But there have been some times when I was sure that I'd gotten to a place where Iwas no longer doing the writing. And (I'm just considering this as a possibility as I write this) but maybe we shouldn't even consider settling on story until we've gotten to a place where we are along for the ride. *I obviously grapple with this myself*
 

Maze Runner

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I do grapple with beginnings. How to start is a big issue with me. What to settle on. The first story I wrote had parameters, some things I wanted (had to) stay true to, so my challenge became finding the drama, what it meant in the context of the human experience.

My next two just with a character and a job.

I think (I know) I need a new approach. It's frustrating to the point of paralysis. Lately I've been thinking that instead of extracting theme from the finished (or nearly finished) story, why not start with theme? Now maybe I will need to look at real examples-people I've known or know irl and try to understand their journey, their challenges. Then extract some theme from that understanding and apply it to a different premise-different setting, characters, etc.

Anybody got a take on if that makes any sense or not, I'd love some feedback. I've been pretty confused lately. Thanks.
 

Carrie in PA

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I don't have a process, and every story I've written, long or short, has differed in its origin.

Ditto this. Every story is different. The one I'm working on right now came out of a song. Probably the only constant is that there is *something* that catches my attention and makes me ask "Hmm, what if..."
 

Silva

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I almost always start with a character, and put them in scenes to try and flesh them out, and a plot develops from that. The exceptions to that rule are all premise-lead (If I were going to write a fantasy novel (fantasy not being my area of expertise), what would it be about? If I were to write a contemporary version of 1001 Arabian Nights, how would that work?).

I think I usually start with a character because I'm eternally fascinated by people who are different than me, and like experimenting with seeing the world through a different lens. I'm almost more interested in creating interesting characters than stories, which means my plots usually suck.
 
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Mary Love

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Almost everything I've written came in a dream.
I have vivid dreams, that leave me with characters, settings, scenes, and most importantly: a strong feeling. The one I'm NaNoing was betrayal. The dream had only a scene or two, but that character's (not my) gutted feeling of betrayal and anger stuck with me all day.

I often get up and write a page or two synopsis off a dream. Just checked, I have over fifty of these in my ideas folder. Quite a few I'd like to see written, but there's not enough of me!

Settings in my dreams are interesting, maybe because I'd read so much, but I dream in fantastical settings as well as historical. Usually, I'm the one observing the characters, but deeply enough to feel their emotions, which is where a lot of plot points come from.

Irritatingly, I always wake up before the climaxes, so I suck at writing those. :tongue
 
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Maze Runner

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Almost everything I've written came in a dream...

Wow, I really envy this. I rarely remember my dreams, but tbh, I think it has to do with some bad habits I have. If I can get over those (i'm tryin') maybe my dreams will be more useful again. Spend so much time licking wounds that I create wounds.

Seems to me that to be able to do this (not that it's intentional) is about as good as it can get, if we want to create from the subconscious. It seems that even if the story is not one that you'd have consciously chosen, it would be hard to argue with.
 

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By accident. Every single one of them. I spend most of my time daydreaming about bits and pieces here and there, sometimes a character, sometimes a plot, sometimes a setting, sometimes a theme, and my brain explodes every single time I realize that I can put a few of these together in a way that adds up to the start of an actual story.

Doctor Who fanfic

So I'd been imagining all sorts of Whoniverse scenarios from pretty much the time I started watching Doctor Who, and one of the recurring scenarios was that a sentient ship and a Time Lord brother/sister pair travel the universe, but under the leadership of a human Captain as opposed to Doctor Who (where everybody know's it's the ship calling the shots ;) ) and with a larger crew of maybe half a dozen counting the siblings. Problem is, Doctor Who canon had established very well at that point that The Doctor was the last Time Lord left alive following the aftermath of the Time War.

I was not a writer at this point, but even in a passing daydream, I didn't like the idea that I was changing canon without a good explanation. My first idea was that the two Time Lords had been cloned in a genetic experimentation lab and that they were on the run, but that was just a Voodoo Shark (explanation that's even worse than not offering one in the first place)

*How did two people with no training escape a maximum-security installation on their own?
*Why would they just trust their situation the first random schmucks they happened to run into?​

But then I asked myself "what if the ship and her human time travelers found the research facility by accident, then broke the Time Lords out?"

Boom. Story. Just a couple of months later, I have the very rough outline of a 4-installment series that would start with the breakout, and I put the first words of the narrative to the page for the first real time in my life :)

... So I just realized that the process of coming into my Urban Fantasy story is 780 words already, and I only feel I'm about 2/3 finished :Shrug:

I'll work on shortening it and save the finished version for a second post, yes?
 

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Urban Fantasy

So my family tricked me into watching Frozen, and I could not stop imagining people with different powers learning that Arendelle had become a sanctuary from the witch-hunts.

Once again, I spent the next few months accidentally coming up with surprisingly intricate plot details, but I swore to myself that I would not start another fanfiction until I was finished writing the Doctor Who one.

Which just lead me to wonder if I should File Off the Serial Numbers (yes, that is an actual fanfiction term. Our apologies as a community, by the way, for 50 Shades of Grey) and put my personal characters into a fantasy world of my own creation that I could publish professionally. I came to the conclusion that my initial cast of characters worked better in the Frozen-verse, but I kept trying to come up with other characters that would work in an original fantasy world.

Then I found myself wondering if I should write a Dungeons & Dragons novel like R. A. Salvatore (not entirely sure where this came from, actually), so I played around with some character concepts that I came to love, and I realized that I would also love to see Dungeons & Dragons mechanics applied to an Urban Fantasy world instead of the standard Medieval fantasy.

I also realized that there was no way that this could happen either, but that I could take the characters and the Urban setting and, once again by Filing Off the Serial Numbers, introduce a couple of the mythical species from what had been my Medieval fantasy world.

The Dire Werewolf was easy enough to turn into a human/psoglav shapeshifter, but I had trouble with the Half-Orc until I realized what the theme of my world would be:

Humans are the only intelligent species that evolved on Earth naturally, but for all of human history: sometimes a shapeshifting mage would create a new species, and storytellers would be inspired to create myths about characters of this new species; sometimes a storyteller would create a new species, and a shapeshifting mage would be inspired to recreate it in the real world.

Well established species, like mermaids, harpies, psoglavi... have been around for so long that there's nobody left alive who still remembers whether it was the mages or the myths that came first. Orcs, on the other hand, are such a recent species that everybody still remembers that it was the storyteller who inspired the mages.

But I still didn’t have a story about any of this.

I had characters that I loved

*My lead heroes were: the “werewolf” and half-human half-orc, both sworn magical knights of a militia force. Both were lesbian, yet not remotely interested in one another (their parents tricked them into going on a blind date as teenagers because they were such good friends. The half-orc claims to still have nightmares)

*My lead villain was: a vampire who called herself “Nemesis” and who had started a cult of vigilante serial killers because she wanted to be remembered as the most terrifying supervillain of all time, a level of predator so far above all others that she could only prey on other predators.​

But I couldn’t come up with anything for them to do.



On a completely non-SFF note, I accidentally came up with a bank robbery scenario at around the time I finished my Doctor Who story:

A crew are casing a bank for a “job.” They’d planned on robbing a different one, but it got blown up by an as-yet unknown terrorist before they had a chance. When they’re about to leave, an FBI agent walks in.

She announces that the FBI received a manifesto that the bomber would like them to share with the public: the first explosion had been a dry run, a hostage had been told he would be starring in a 30 Minutes or Less scenario where he was strapped into a suicide bomb vest, taken to a bank, and that he would tell the bank to give him money or his kidnapper would blow them up, but then the bomber blew him up as soon as he got in the building.

If the hostage’s demand had been the first anybody had heard of the bomber, then they’d probably take the chance of calling the police to defuse the bomb instead of cooperating [I later found out that this had been attempted in real life several years before the movie was made, and that this is exactly how it happened].

Now that everybody knows that the bomber is serious, she can send her next hostage with full knowledge that the bank won’t dare take the risk of not cooperating. “At this point, I should hope that the cleverer among you have pieced together that I am not actually here on behalf of the FBI.”

She announces that anybody can feel free to call the police if they like, but that she has already taken her next hostage, and if she does not return to the hideout with food, then a wife and mother will die alone in terror and her husband and children will have to bury an empty casket. “You may think that interrogators may be able to get on my good side, but I just walked into a bank and announced myself to be a megalomaniac Bond villain, does that sound like somebody who can be negotiated with? If I find myself in a police station, I would kill myself in a heartbeat just to get the thrill of knowing that one last victim is going to die without me there to save her. If the bank wants her to live, then they have one week to get a duffel bag full of 100s together. Any questions?”

At which point one of my original bank robbers raises his hand and asks if she’s stalking him and his friends. His boss smacks him in the back of his head, but he already has the bomber’s attention, and she gets him to admit that he had planned on robbing a bank, that it blew up, and that he was in the middle of casing the second bank, and now here’s the terrorist who blew up the first one.

The bomber finds that hilarious and forces the crew to join her in her evil lair. They find out that she doesn’t even care about the money, she just loves reading about the most terrifying psychopaths in American history and wants those same books to be written about her one day.

… But I didn’t have a story about what happened next, so I put this on the back-burner too.

A couple of weeks later, I’m going back to my vampire supervillain Nemesis and trying to work out a story about her. I’m thinking “vigilante” might not be the thing she wants to be famous for: she’d be threatening other murderers, but she’d also be protecting their intended victims, and she wanted to scare the living daylights out of everybody who knew about her.

Next thing I know, three simple words are punching a hole into my brain and giving me the novel that I am now 38,505 words into: She’s the bomber.

Putting my bank robbery scenario into my Fantasy world gave me a story about my bank robbers discovering the supernatural for the first time when their job gets hijacked by a vampire.
 

Chris P

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Ideas aren't the hard part. And my ideas can come from anywhere.

My first-ever published short story was a flash piece of 700 words that was more or less the transcript of a dream I had right before waking up one morning. In the dream and story, I've "Quantum Leaped" into the body of Governor Connelly while he, his wife and the Kennedys are getting into the car at Love Field in Dallas.

My short-lived, ill-fated and so-far only commercially published novel started out as a modern retelling of the 1000-year old Tale of Genji. Genji is about the can-do-no-wrong favorite adopted child of the emperor (very, VERY loose summary). This served as the nucleus for my story about a corporate wonderboy with dark passions the company executives will go to any lengths to protect from exposure.

Several of my favorite stories originated from prompts here on AW. I used to participate in the monthly prompts in the Writing for Kids forum, and wrote a series of stories about an older man and his loveable, silly dog. For another story, I placed second in an AW western contest (thank you AW community!) with a story I wouldn't have written unless challenged. That story, although taking place in Wyoming, was inspired by reading non-fiction about the history of the Choctaw band I lived near in Mississippi at the time.

I have a stalled project inspired by a recent song. The song, to me, sounded like soldiers in the trenches of the First World War. This developed into an historical sci-fi where an inventor dreams up the basic idea of television, but plays the army to develop the technology under the guise of cloaking devices for tanks.
 

CWatts

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Almost everything I've written came in a dream.
I have vivid dreams, that leave me with characters, settings, scenes, and most importantly: a strong feeling. The one I'm NaNoing was betrayal. The dream had only a scene or two, but that character's (not my) gutted feeling of betrayal and anger stuck with me all day.

I often get up and write a page or two synopsis off a dream. Just checked, I have over fifty of these in my ideas folder. Quite a few I'd like to see written, but there's not enough of me!

Settings in my dreams are interesting, maybe because I'd read so much, but I dream in fantastical settings as well as historical. Usually, I'm the one observing the characters, but deeply enough to feel their emotions, which is where a lot of plot points come from.

Irritatingly, I always wake up before the climaxes, so I suck at writing those. :tongue

I've had a few dreams I have turned into stories. My current WIP is from a particularly intense one I had about 5 years ago. In it I was lying in a rubble-filled street somewhere in 19th century Europe, watching soldiers in Civil-War-ish uniforms go around stabbing fallen bodies with bayonets. I'd been shot and was dying and in the dream I was only 19 and just so badly wanted to live... Pretty sure dream-me didn't make it, but the MC she inspired did.

What's kind of eerie is that in the time and place I ended up setting it, the standard-issue rifle had the same distinctive long, slightly curved bayonets I saw in the dream.
 

edutton

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A line or dialogue pops into my head and I build a story around it.
That's basically how I started. A situation and two lines popped into my head, and by the time I got to a computer I knew the basic premise. I went to make a quick note so I wouldn't forget about it, and two hours later had written an entire scene that later got scrapped but that set up most of the important characters and their relationships exactly as they are now.

[ETA: But what it really started with was the MC's voice. Her entire character was crystal clear to me in those two lines (which did make it into a later scene, the only thing to be salvaged from the initial burst). That voice made the difference between this and every story I didn't finish.]

From there I pantsed twelve chapters, then VERY loosely outlined the rest and just kept writing. (I'm a pantser, but I also edit as I go so that I end up with a (relatively) clean first draft.)

One chapter died in edits, two key scenes were reworked and one added, but the overall structure of the story hasn't really altered significantly - it's just told better now. :)
 
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Mary Love

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What's kind of eerie is that in the time and place I ended up setting it, the standard-issue rifle had the same distinctive long, slightly curved bayonets I saw in the dream.

Wow, that sounds like credit to reincarnation; sure you weren't reliving a past death? Ha, not saying I believe that shizzle, just fodder for thought and plot bunnies. ;)
 

Jade Rothwell

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I almost always start with a character, and put them in scenes to try and flesh them out, and a plot develops from that. The exceptions to that rule are all premise-lead (If I were going to write a fantasy novel (fantasy not being my area of expertise), what would it be about? If I were to write a contemporary version of 1001 Arabian Nights, how would that work?).

I think I usually start with a character because I'm eternally fascinated by people who are different than me, and like experimenting with seeing the world through a different lens. I'm almost more interested in creating interesting characters than stories, which means my plots usually suck.

I'm pretty much the same way. I come up with a character first and build everything else around what I think an interesting story for them would be. I think my love of characters is why I love D&D so much, too, haha. I like getting out of my own head, for a while, and imagining what it would be like to be someone else.
 

DancingMaenid

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I'm really late to the game (it's been a crazy week), but I wanted to answer.

I typically start with a vague premise/idea or a character, which leads to more characters. It's hard for me to start with a plot. That frustrates me, because I feel like I should be able to. But in order to feel motivated, I need to feel some sort of investment in what I'm working on, and that comes from the characters for me. I envy people who easily come with characters to fit a plot. I can do it--some of my favorite characters have come about because I needed a character to fill a certain role. But it's a long process for me. I think this is why I struggle with short stories sometimes. I can write them, but it can be hard to motivate myself because I enjoy the longer process of fleshing out a novel.

Coming up with ideas feels very organic to me. There's some intention in it, but the planning process blends together in a way where it's like a plant growing: you can see an obvious difference between growth stages, but can't necessarily recognize when or how those changes occurred.

Because my ideas evolve so much, it's hard to pin down an origin. My current WIP "started" when I watched the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie and got the idea that it would be fun to write about werewolves and vampires. That's it. My novel doesn't even involve werewolves anymore (they got jettisoned to another idea that I might tackle next).
 

Oldborne

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I generally have a small idea or a concept which comes to me either commuting or perhaps watching TV, or reading. I'll begin fleshing the concept out with some light world building and try to find a plot somewhere (assume the concept wasn't the plot idea, which it rarely is. Most of my concepts are interesting worlds or notions/ 'what ifs').

Once that's fleshed out more, I'll write a simple plot: Jon is here. He wants to go there to achieve this, but that prevents him, so he does this and succeeds/ fails.

Next, I expand the simple plot into a page with more details and a protagonist who has clear goals and wants. After that, I write a complete chapter by chapter guide with everything needing to happen from start to finish.

Only thing left to do after that if write the sucker.

I'm pretty jealous of the folks in this thread who dream their ideas, must be great!
 

DragonHeart

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My point of origin is different for every individual work. Sometimes it's sparked by something specific; other times it's a buildup of thoughts and experiences that eventually combine into a concept. Sometimes it's fueled entirely by emotion. Sometimes I get woken up in the middle of the night by an idea, though I pretty much never remember my dreams.

As such, how the story starts is also different in everything I write. The one common characteristic they all have is that as often as possible, the first words I write are the title. Maybe it's a little New Age-y, but for me naming it gives it form. It's also a pretty handy way to avoid blank page syndrome, I suppose.

How much actual development occurs before the first draft is written depends a lot on the story, but I almost always have something. The stories themselves are written down linearly, and I rarely outline beyond some very basic plot and character notes. As a fantasy writer most of my pre-writing is invested into worldbuilding, which tends to give the plot form anyway as it develops.
 
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